Chapter 5
Oh boy. Should I save this for Kevin? Yes, I probably should.
In fact, it’s not late, so I could call him right now—see if he wants me to read it to him over the phone or just mail it.
And yet ... he’s been here only a few times in his adult life? I love the guy, but I can’t help thinking he might have taken the luxury of having parents and grandparents for granted.
And Mabel has, this quickly, begun to feel like a friend to me, or as Anne of Green Gables would put it, a kindred spirit.
Which is to say, I’m not sure Mabel and I have much in common, but she seems like an enigma in certain ways, and who doesn’t love an enigma?
I confess to feeling a little mad at Kevin, fearing that he neglected his enigmatic grandmother.
And if his family hasn’t found this note two long years after she died ...
And if I’m the one to find it, and if the way she addressed it makes me feel at least a little bit acknowledged ...
Though it may be unfair and I’m clearly making a lot of assumptions, I get the sense I’m more interested in Mabel at the moment than anyone in her family, so I pick up the piece of paper and unfold it.
At the top is a common brass key, taped securely to the page with several pieces of Scotch tape. And below that, in jagged handwriting:
This key leads to things once beloved and always sacred.
Do not use the key unless you intend to care for these things.
People so often say “they’re just things,” but things sometimes do matter, and there is no shame in that.
Things represent people’s lives, people’s loves, people’s dreams. I am a reluctant keeper of these precious things, caring for each of them for at least a moment, an hour, a day.
If you take up this key, my hope and prayer is that you will do the same—for at least a moment, love these things as they were once loved by another.
To reach them, a treasure hunt. That will make the finding sweeter, I think.
Here we go.
1.??Begin at the trunk of the big mimosa.
2.??Walk twenty paces to the east.
3.??Turn to the left until the one-eyed chicken comes into view.
4.??Walk to the one-eyed chicken, and standing directly before it, look southeast to find the faded rainbow.
5.??When you reach the rainbow’s end, face to the right and locate the tallest tree.
6.??At the base of the trunk, follow the fern path to the great stone frog.
7.??Look to the north for the green gateway, behind which rests forgotten treasures.
Okay, a lot to unpack there. I think I need a mimosa, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the kind of mimosa she means.
What on earth is Mabel talking about? Would Kevin know if I asked him? I have the distinct feeling he wouldn’t. Which means this is just between Mabel and me.
My observation that Mabel liked puzzles has just exceeded my expectations in a big way.
These “forgotten things” are clearly hidden somewhere nearby—but why?
They sound like a nuisance and a treasure at the very same time, which makes no sense.
Why does her family not know about these things if they were of value to her?
All questions without answers, but in this moment, it feels important to me to see Mabel, find a photo of her. I have no idea what she even looked like.
With the list of instructions still in hand, I head to the living room, to a wall of hanging pictures I noticed without really studying them.
Pay dirt: a black-and-white wedding photo from probably the early fifties.
This has to be Mabel in a simple, white, below-the-knee dress and lacy veil, a handsome young groom holding her hand.
She was beautiful with dark, tidy, shoulder-length hair and precise lipstick that was probably red.
But what I really want to see is Mabel as she was toward the end of her life, the Mabel I find myself wishing I’d met while she was still here.
Other pictures on the wall get me nowhere in this regard—though I learn that Kevin was a cute kid and an awkward teenager—so I locate photo albums on the built-ins and go digging.
I start from the left end of the vertically stacked albums and get lucky pretty fast: I quickly find a shot of Mabel, probably in her seventies at the time, next to her Christmas tree.
She’s wearing a collared sweatshirt with a reindeer embroidered on it—I just knew it!
But I don’t linger on the sweatshirt—instead I focus on her face, her eyes.
She’s smiling, and her eyes hold ... love, and hope, and kindness, and her own personal history.
Even though she’s just looking at the camera, I feel as if she’s staring right at me. Kindred spirits.
“Tomorrow, Mabel,” I say out loud to the picture—because I guess that’s the point I’ve reached now, talking to pictures of dead people. “Tomorrow I’m going hunting.”
I wanted an activity, after all. I think I just found one.
If I knew what a mimosa tree looked like, this would be easier.
The next morning finds me standing in the backyard in my sun hat, as lost as I felt upon my arrival, albeit for different reasons now.
I start back toward the house, thinking to google it, only to remember I can’t and that’s why my phone isn’t with me—it’s become a fairly useless thing.
But I head inside anyway and pick up the landline.
Of course, I then have to use my phone to find Kevin’s number, because who on earth actually has to dial a number these days—except for me.
“Hey there, what’s up?” he answers cheerfully.
I cut to the chase. “What’s a mimosa tree look like?” I have just resolved to bother him with every single question I want to google but can’t, until I get tired of it or quit feeling the need to have information at my fingertips.
“Um, why?” Understandably, he’s thrown.
“Just wondering.” Like I said, it’s between me and Mabel at this point.
“Okay. Well, it’s got ... fronds, you might say, sort of in a ... ferny way. And it gets these puffy pink blooms that are very pretty. They might be starting to bloom down there right now actually, and if not, probably soon.”
“Okay,” I reply, taking all that in. “Big or small?”
“Um, all sizes. From very little to mega huge. So ... are you becoming a nature buff?” he asks hopefully, clearly pleased I’m calling for some reason other than to berate him or complain about my surroundings.
“No,” I say. “Was just interested in that particular tree. Thanks. Gotta run.”
“You do?” It’s a super reasonable question, all things considered.
But I keep it simple. “Yep. Talk soon—bye.” Then I hang up. I’m on a mission. A mission from Mabel.
Armed with this new information, I step back out onto the rear porch and peruse the yard.
It takes me a minute to zero in on them because the pink blooms he mentioned are just starting, and they kind of blend in until you look closely. But over the course of a few minutes I begin to realize ... there are mimosa trees every-damn-where .
Tall and gangly ones, small and wispy ones. There are other types of trees in the yard, too, but mimosas dot the expanse more commonly than any other. The pink, fluffy blossoms make me certain.
Shoring up my determination, I venture down into the yard and refer back to Mabel’s instructions. The big mimosa tree. Such a description suggests one that stands out from the rest. And ... I’m not sure any of these really fit the bill. Most of the larger ones are similar in size.
Even so, I do my due diligence and approach every tree that’s even remotely on the large side and walk the twenty paces east—grateful to know the sun sets directly over the lake, showing me which way is west—then try to find anything that could in any way whatsoever represent a “one-eyed chicken.” Now, on the one hand, I have no idea what that might be, and thus it could be frighteningly easy to miss.
But on the other, no matter which tree I walk from, a look to the right leads into Cowboy Matt’s backyard, which has a few big billowy trees and a small shed to the far side, but nothing resembling or even shaped like a chicken that I can find.
At some point it occurs to me to hope the police chief is off police-chiefing this morning and not watching me out a window and deciding I’m even weirder than I’ve already seemed. Not that I care what he thinks of me. I don’t.
I turn back toward the lake, scanning the yard once more with a sigh—when I spot what appears to be an absolutely massive tree with boughs practically aglow with pink in the morning sun ... across the lake at the winery.
That has to be it! After all, Mabel didn’t say the mimosa was in her yard—that’s just an assumption I made.
Maybe if I asked anyone around here about “the big mimosa,” they’d say, “Oh, that’s at the winery!
” And I really do need to reinstate my daily walks after a couple of days not getting them in, so this gives me a destination I intended to check out anyway.
It might be too early in the day for wine, but it’s a good idea to go before it gets hot out.
I head inside only long enough to grab a water bottle and exchange my flip-flops for walking shoes.
As I depart, I immediately miss the comfort and security of something as simple as a sidewalk, since of course Lost Valley Lane doesn’t rate such luxuries.
I keep an eye out since any approaching car could mow me down—it’s a fairly narrow lane.
Most of the walk is shaded, which is, so far, the only real perk the route holds as the sun rises higher.